With the rising costs and environmental concerns associated with fossil fuels, renewable energy sources have become increasingly important. The development of renewable fuel sources provides a means for reducing the dependence on fossil fuels. Accordingly, many different areas of renewable fuel research are currently being explored and developed.
With its low cost and wide availability, biomass has increasingly been emphasized as an ideal feedstock in renewable fuel research. Consequently, many different conversion processes have been developed that use biomass as a feedstock to produce useful biofuels and/or specialty chemicals. One such conversion process is catalytic pyrolysis wherein liquid products are produced that spontaneously separate into an aqueous phase and a liquid organic phase. The liquid organic phase is commonly referred to as bio-oil. While catalytic pyrolysis produces high yields of bio-oil, most, if not all, of the bio-oil produced is of low quality due to the presence of high levels of reactive organic molecules as well as solids including char, inorganics from biomass, scale from processing equipment and fines from heat transfer agents and catalysts.
It should be understood that the above-described discussion is provided for illustrative purposes only and is not intended to limit the scope or subject matter of the appended claims or those of any related patent application or patent. Thus, none of the appended claims or claims of any related application or patent should be limited by the above discussion or construed to address, include or exclude each or any of the above-cited features or disadvantages merely because of the mention thereof herein.
Accordingly, there is a need for improving the efficiency of catalytic pyrolysis of a biomass feedstock which maximizes the quality and yield of the produced bio-oil having one or more of the attributes or capabilities described or shown in, or as may be apparent from, the other portions of this patent.